Nokia + Microsot Good or Bad for Finland ?

sandundasa · Post by **sandundasa** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:08 am

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/ ... DG20110211

* Nokia teams up with Microsoft on smartphones

* Nokia to use Windows Phone as software platform

* Nokia to use Microsoft's Bing search on devices

* Says 2011-2012 to be transition years

(Adds details throughout, analyst quote)

By Tarmo Virki

LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Nokia (NOK1V.HE) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) have teamed up to take on Google and Apple in the fast-growing smartphone market as the Finnish cellphone maker attempts to regain its leading position in the sector.

Nokia said on Friday it would use Windows Phone as the software platform for its smartphones as part of new chief executive Stephen Elop's overhaul of the world's biggest cellphone maker.

Microsoft's Windows Phone platform is widely recognised by industry experts as a leading edge technology but has not yet gained success among consumers.

"This is a partnership born out of both parties' fear of marginalisation at the hands of Apple and Google but there is no silver bullet," said analyst Geoff Blaber from CCS Insight.

**Sponsor:**

jmakinen · Post by **jmakinen** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:39 am

MS is not a communications company - Nokia was supposed to be.

The only really positive thing said about MS is their depth of cash - but it hasn't done much to help them.

It really would seem that Nokia should try to re-fashion itself as a much smaller specialized company - but that now will be more difficult with the MS partnership - as that should have also been MS' approach years ago - but they never did it.

A real enigma -

Cod · Post by **Cod** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:56 am

jmakinen wrote:much smaller specialized company

..isn't that what RIM's strength had been? Smaller specialised companies seem to be getting slaughtered unless they have a very loyal customer base.

jmakinen · Post by **jmakinen** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 1:57 pm

And so are the giants - so it's the old rock and hard place ploy.

Anyhow it never seems to affect the bonuses

anas465 · Post by **anas465** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 5:28 pm

I would expect then a lot of job cuts in SW R&D, maybe thousands in Finland.
a top google executive said : "Two turkeys do not make an Eagle"

it might be a good news for Microsoft, a new partner besides LG, samsung,.. to use their OS
but for Nokia, it's unlikely to return the company to glory or it would take time if so (stock price fall down by 14% today!)

pres589 · Post by **pres589** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 8:35 pm

R&D budget is supposed to get cut per slide shown during PR talk by Elop. If Nokia can do serious work changing & improving the OS and still keep their recognized place as a good hardware company, then maybe this works for Nokia. Finland just lost a lot of programming jobs at one of its larger home grown companies, I don't see how Finland gets anything good out of this at all.

jmakinen · Post by **jmakinen** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 8:55 pm

One is supposed to make hay while the sun shines.

It didn't need rocket science to know that Finland's 'window of opportunity' was to be limited - with Nokia going north or south.

Unfortunately this 'window' was basically software which can be developed also in Nunavut. So it's a big question what kind of residual infrastructure is left from Nokialand.

´´´´´´´´´´´´

In any case the current unemployment problem will be exacerbated - 'let go' Nokia-ers will certainly create a surplus of techfolks on the labor market.

maxxfi · Post by **maxxfi** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:28 am

jmakinen wrote: In any case the current unemployment problem will be exacerbated - 'let go' Nokia-ers will certainly create a surplus of techfolks on the labor market.

And apart of likely thousands of Nokians that will be 'let go', there is also a consistent amount of medium and small companies that currently work for Nokia that will be seriously hit by these latest events.

And... anybody remembers of Sendo?

tuulen · Post by **tuulen** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:46 am

The computer world is now focused on applications, apps, and the cloud. Apps and the cloud are OS dependent. Those companies now having a major presence in apps and the cloud are in a dominant position, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, and those companies not now having a major presence in apps and the cloud are at a severe disadvantage. That appears to be the situation Nokia had to consider.

pierrot · Post by **pierrot** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 9:01 am

tuulen wrote:The computer world is now focused on applications, apps, and the cloud. Apps and the cloud are OS dependent. Those companies now having a major presence in apps and the cloud are in a dominant position, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, and those companies not now having a major presence in apps and the cloud are at a severe disadvantage. That appears to be the situation Nokia had to consider.

Do you actually understand what you write? It looks to me you take some buzzwords you heard and just make sentences with them here. How is MS in a dominant position for "apps" (besides Office) or the "cloud"? How is Apple dominant in the cloud? How/why is the cloud OS dependent?

Pursuivant · Post by **Pursuivant** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 11:04 am

tuulen · Post by **tuulen** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:19 pm

pierrot wrote:
tuulen wrote:The computer world is now focused on applications, apps, and the cloud. Apps and the cloud are OS dependent. Those companies now having a major presence in apps and the cloud are in a dominant position, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, and those companies not now having a major presence in apps and the cloud are at a severe disadvantage. That appears to be the situation Nokia had to consider.
Do you actually understand what you write? It looks to me you take some buzzwords you heard and just make sentences with them here. How is MS in a dominant position for "apps" (besides Office) or the "cloud"? How is Apple dominant in the cloud? How/why is the cloud OS dependent?

Clouds are made of apps. Apps operate by software. Software is served by an OS. Nokia's OS could not reach the clouds. End of story!

anas465 · Post by **anas465** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:39 pm

one funny thing, Nokia uses apple loop song, Pendulum, to announce their partnership (seems they used iMovie),

One hungarian guy even discovered that it is the same music used by apple to present the ney unibody Macbooks, uuuupppssi

jmakinen · Post by **jmakinen** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:29 pm

Crazy about music!

But Ballmer should be told the name of the company he's partnering with - Nokia - not Nakia

And Elop looked and sounded like Homer Simpson.

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:50 pm

Seems more predictable than bold for Elop. I don't know where it will lead. Microsoft certainly doesn't have any history of technological innovation or Zen spirit (either of which could be pivotal here), but economically they've been very successful at coming late to any game and taking the other players' lunchboxes by brute economic force. Funny how they have become the very IBM they displaced when IBM grew too old and sclerotic. But will there be a Gerstner for Microsoft?

More to the present point, will Elop be Nokia's Gerstner? Is this a brilliant contrarian move or just elaborate fanfare to dress up as radical the obvious, plodding, conservative, easiest-path measure of joining Nokia to the Borg?

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